It has been belatedly confirmed that three Korean-Americans—Unification Church international president Moon Hyung-jin, Pyeonghwa Motors CEO Park Sang-kwon and Washington Times chairman Douglas D.M. Joo—crossed the DMZ on Dec 24 and visited Pyongyang to offer condolences for the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
Now, Yonhap suggests that the government kept quiet the fact that the visit—which came two days prior to Kim Dae-jung’s widow and the Hyundai chairwoman’s visit to North Korea—was made via the inter-Korean border by Kaesong. In fact, the Unification Ministry at the time said they learned of the visit via North Korean media reports, when in fact the government had opened the land route across the DMZ for the men, explaining that since the men were American, they could visit North Korea anyway through China, so why opened up the DMZ for them.
PS: Yes, I suppose blood is thicker than water (as are investments, of which the Unification Church has several in North Korea), but still, does anyone else find it unseemly that the chairman of one a conservative-leaning American newspaper is paying condolences to the North Koreans?
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Korea does take out full page advertisements in the Washington times.
Maybe the chairman just got the two Koreas mixed up, after all they do have “democratic” in the titles of their country, and the chairman is an American.
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